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“Rick and Chelsea, may your souls be tied forever.”
That’s how Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood were first introduced, via a text from producer David Bernad. There was no chemistry test, no read-through, so the soon-to-be co-stars hadn’t met yet.
“He said, ‘I’m Scorpio,’ and I said, ‘I’m Scorpio moon.’ And then we both didn’t know what to say after that. ‘See you in Thailand!’” Wood is laughing and looking to Goggins to confirm, which he does with a nod. The pair has only seen each other once since the February premiere event. Now, it’s the first weekend of May.
And a lot has happened since then. Namely, the entirety of HBO’s “The White Lotus” Season 3 came and went. Audiences fell in love with the mysterious Rick Hackett and his free-spirit girlfriend, Chelsea. Their love story was an up-and-down, complicated journey that featured Chelsea consistently trying to pull her boyfriend from a dark spiral as he struggled with the fact that the man he believed had killed his father was close by. Ultimately, that spiral got the best of him, resulting in both his and Chelsea’s deaths.
“I think we were there for a day or two without meeting because I was so fucking in my head alone,” Goggins says. Then he texted her to come over for lunch. She remembers, “I didn’t know what to order. I was like, ‘Can you pick for me?’ I was so nervous.”
Goggins was nervous, too. But their journey started before she reached the table.
“The minute she walked around the corner, I felt, ‘This is gonna work,’” he says. “Two minutes into the conversation, it felt like I’ve known this person for 100 years.”
So began their tradition of meals together. The cast stayed at the Four Seasons in Thailand and naturally, due to the filming schedule, spent most of their times in their own character bubbles: The women (Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan); the Ratliffs (Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook); and Chelsea and Rick. Schwarzenegger would hold group dinners or breakfasts to debrief, but it quickly became too much for the duo.
“I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, it’s not method or anything, I just felt like I needed to stay in the space,” says Goggins. Wood agreed, “Both of us would get overwhelmed.”
She refers to them as the “foxes” who would run in, grab food and run out. “But there were never any negative vibes,” Goggins says before I can even ask.
Yes, he’s aware of the rumors. Isaacs has referred to tension on set in a few interviews, once saying that during filming, there were “fewer deaths but just as much drama” as on the show.
“We’d never lived on a set. This is the first time we were all experiencing basically a reality TV show,” Wood says. “I think we both struggle with work-life balance anyway, so it’s hard because there’s not even separation in distance.”
Since wrap, there’s been distance between Goggins and most of the cast because he’s been working 70-hour weeks on “Fallout.” While most watched the finale together at an event, he was alone in New York for a late-night appearance.
“I probably wouldn’t have gone anyways,” he says at first. But within 15 minutes of discussing the finale, both are tearing up and he admits to Wood, “I wish I would have been able to watch this with you. It was so cathartic and so painful, and I regret that. I really do.”
Mostly, they both realized something at the same moment while watching: A key Chelsea and Rick love scene had been cut. In the finale, the characters have an emotional reunion on the beach, then went to their bedroom and discuss their relationship. Wood says it had a “similar feel” to the “that’s the plan” scene at breakfast, confirming their love for each other. It also involved an intimate sex scene.
“We designed the whole journey, even down to the fact that Chelsea gets on Rick in the first [love] scene. Then in the last episode, it was Rick picking Chelsea up. It was so, so delicate,” Wood recalls.
Goggins echoes her. While the first love scene showed their connection, “the last one was two people who were free. It was this very long, suspended moment of these two people looking at each other. It was so powerful.”
With that, he picks up my recorder and yells a message for creator Mike White: “Fuck you, Mike! We want a director’s cut!”
But back to other topics. Goggins is the “most enthusiastic man ever,” Wood says — something I didn’t need to hear. When he came in for the 10 a.m. photoshoot, his energy was contagious. “Let’s have some fuckin’ fun,” he told our crew as he walked into the photo studio in West Hollywood, carrying his own speaker and asking to connect his own music. First, he played Soul Coughing’s “Screenwriter’s Blues,” and followed up with Led Zeppelin.
The pair didn’t see each other until Wood finished taking her solo photos a bit later. While she didn’t bring her own music, she suggested “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones before he entered: “Anything Stones I think, now that Walton’s coming in.”
Visibly emotional seeing each other, the two embraced for 30 seconds as the Variety team suddenly felt we were intruding on a private moment. The laughter then began almost immediately, and their photo shoot transitioned into a dance party. After, they asked to step outside for a quick break.
“We were saying outside, ‘We can’t start crying!’ We’re the two most emotional, sensitive people!” Wood says with a laugh. But there’s a reason for the emotion.
There’s a reason that they’ve hugged multiple times, held each other’s hands and continuously exchanged compliments during our conversation.
Part of that is because of how much Wood helped Goggins through the darkness. “I was alone purposely in this experience — not selfishly, not narcissistically,” he says. “Everyone has their process. Mine is being alone. But Aimee as Chelsea wouldn’t let me do that.”
On set, she’d tell him, “You’re going into the sad, parallel world. Stay in the real one.”
So, let’s talk about the real one. First, I bring up “Saturday Night Live,” since, at the time of our chat, Goggins is seven days out from hosting. A week before his gig was announced, Wood called out the show’s “mean and unfunny” parody of her. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t host, she says.
“I was so upset when people [said that],” she says. “For fuck’s sake, of course Walton should do ‘SNL.’ That’s got nothing to do with me. He’s fucking had a career for, like, how long?”
Without missing a beat, Goggins responds, “70 years.”
Wood continues, commenting on the sketch show: “I said it, and then the next minute, [lowers her voice,] ‘Aimee caught crying over ‘SNL’ skit.’ I was not crying over the ‘SNL’ skit. I was over it the minute I said it.”
As she continues, she sits up, chin up. “This is an important moment for me, because what I would usually do is see it and turn the anger inward. I thought, I’m just gonna say it, so I don’t spiral.”
Goggins puts it perfectly: “That’s self-love.”
It’s hard not to share the transcript of the next part of the discussion:
Wood: “I know for a fact a man wrote that. It wasn’t Sarah Sherman, don’t hate on her. I didn’t like the concept. Take the piss out of me. Do the teeth! I’ve got the teeth, but, like —”
Goggins: “You have the most beautiful smile in the world, you know that.”
Wood: “Thank you. The punch line should not be how I look. That’s what bothered me. Do the caricature, because that’s what ‘SNL’ is. It felt misogynistic. It felt like the punch line was a woman’s appearance, which is just not funny. It’s not cool.”
Goggins, picking up my microphone: “Here it is everybody. Dude in the U.K., we’ll get to that too.”
At the time, Goggins, half-asleep and heading into makeup to become the Ghoul, shared the parody clip and complimented Jon Hamm’s impression of him. Hours later, he saw Wood’s response, felt awful and deleted his post.
“Then the next day, I made a vicious swipe against my friend? I’ve been posting for 14 fucking years, and if I’m gonna say something, but I’m gonna say it to your face,” he says. “I don’t use social media in any way, and I’m not a mean guy.”
He picks up my recorder again: “That’s the story.”
But earlier, he mentioned the “dude in the U.K.,” referencing the Times’ story, which was published 48 hours before we sit down, with the headline, “Walton Goggins: Aimee Lou Wood? I’m not gonna have that conversation.”
First, he wants to make one thing clear about his relationship with Wood.
“There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me,” he says, getting choked up. Goggins turns to look at Wood. “This is Goldie Hawn. This is Meg Ryan. She can do anything, and she will. You watch what the next 20 years of her experience will be. I’ll be on an island, I think Greece. But she’s special. There is no feud. She is love and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply.”
The Times interview wasn’t the time for the discussion, he says, first because Wood wasn’t there. “What am I gonna do, speak for both of us? Never.”
Goggins says the reporter asked three different times about Wood and had a “divisive nature.” The last question, he says, compared Goggins’ teeth to Wood’s, asking if they’d bonded over that.
“What he was insinuating, it was so disgusting. It was so appalling. I was flabbergasted. And I said, ‘Fuck mate, wow. I think we’re done here,’” Goggins says.
When he mentions the story calling him “sleazy,” Wood is shocked. “What???” she gasps. “How horrible!”
I make sure that Wood has a chance to speak about the rumors and the fact that Goggins unfollowing her on social media has made headlines for months.
“I think it’s such a comment on where we’re at culturally. Why is everyone obsessing over Instagram? That is irrelevant. We don’t give a shite about Instagram,” she says. “Why not have conversations about the story and Rick and Chelsea and enjoy it?”
At first, Wood wanted to correct people and bring it back to the show, but knew anything she said would get twisted: “Eventually I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing.”
She pauses and Goggins scooches to the edge of the couch, leaning into the recorder more. “If I may add, just to put this to bed? The following or unfollowing. I’m a grown-ass man.”
Long story short, Goggins isn’t good with goodbyes.
“When I left ‘Justified,’ I went up to Tim [Olyphant], and I hugged him and I said, ‘I love you, and I hope I see you in rooms for the rest of my life,’” he says. “I didn’t talk to him for almost two years. I’ve done that with every single thing that I’ve done.”
“The White Lotus” was no different; in fact, it was painful. In 2004, his wife died by suicide. He spent the next three years traveling and searching for peace. It led him to Thailand, then to Bangkok. When he arrived in Bangkok on set, he realized he was in the exact same place.
“My catharsis in this experience was different than other people’s, because of my history in this place. I knew what we had gone through, and I knew how close that we had gotten, and I needed to begin to process saying goodbye to Rick and Chelsea,” Goggins says, beginning to cry. “And I knew that that was going to take a while for me, so I let her know, this is what I’ve gotta do. And she was extremely supportive about that.”
After filming ended, “I needed to just back away from everyone,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to anyone. I couldn’t handle it. Judge me or don’t. I don’t give a fuck what you think. This is my process. Rick means everything to me, and Chelsea means everything to me. And so that’s what I needed to do for me to process all of this.”
He jokes that if he had been following Olyphant or his “The Shield” co-star Michael Chiklis, he would have unfollowed them after those shows wrapped, too.
“You know what?” Goggins laughs and gets up. “I’ll follow you right now!” He heads across the room to find his phone, coming back to sit with Wood. He opens Instagram and becomes one of her 3 million followers.
“It’s all so ridiculous,” he says. “It’s just a part of me just saying goodbye to this character so that now Aimee and I will be friends for fucking ever.”
They hug again, and Wood tells him, “I completely understand.” He tells her, “I love you.”
With tears in his eyes, he continues, “I’m emotional because we haven’t been in the same city to ever talk about this. So for me, this is just so wonderful.”
I begin wrapping up, aware that Wood has to catch a flight to New York.
“Hopefully that answers everybody’s questions,” he says. He’s wiped his tears. The contagious smile is back. “What else? Do you guys want to talk about astrology?”
English (US) ·